This document discusses augmented reality and virtual reality technologies and their potential to augment human perception and interaction, enabling new "superpowers." It describes several possible applications including holographic telepresence, spatial entertainment, perceptual intelligence, and more. The document argues that these technologies will gradually replace old institutions as they remove natural limits and constraints, but it remains unclear what might replace the current institutions.

1. Inside the Looking Glass
Avi Bar-Zeev
Co-Founder & CTO, Syntertainment
Disclaimer:
This talk consists of my own views, ideas and experience,
not those of any employer, past or present.

2. Introduction
• Part 1

3. Fight!
AR vs. VR

4. Historical Interlude
Ivan Sutherland’s “Sword of Damacles” HMD was a much AR as VR, circa 1968.
FWIW: by comparison, your speaker was born that same year.

5. What we’re really talking about is
• Augmented Perception
– We see, hear, touch a world of digital information
– It becomes as important (to us) as the physical
world is today
• Augmented Interaction
– We can more easily interact and communicate by
expressing thoughts, emotions or natural actions
– In so doing, we can even affect the physical world

6. Question
If you could have any
superpower,
what would it be?

7. Cold War Russia.
--Chris Turner

8. Clairvoyance
Genius
No, more like this…

9. Every game-changing technology
can be seen as a human superpower
Airplane
(primitive teleportation)
Telephone
(primitive telepathy)
Television
(primitive clairvoyance)
Computer
(enhanced intelligence)
Google
(primitive omniscience)
or
(the power to know every
dumb fact in existence)
Facebook
(primitive omnipresence)
or
(the power to keep up with friends
you couldn’t be bothered to call)
Twitter
(primitive omnipotence)
or
(the power to believe
you’re important)
electricity
(directed energy)
Wheel
(primitive telekinesis)

10. Augmented Perception and Interaction
adds something to all of them
Bi-Location / LifeSurfing
Holographic Telepresence Spatial Entertainment
Perceptual Intelligence
X-Ray / Ground Truth LifeStreamingZeitgeist / Gestalt
Crowd-Solving
Creative Projection

11. Crowd-Solving

12. Holographic Telepresence

13. Spatial Entertainment

14. Creative Projection

15. LifeStreaming

16. Bi-Location / LifeSurfing

17. Perceptual Intelligence

18. Perceptual Intelligence
Affective Q Sensor

19. X-Ray / Ground Truth

20. Zeitgeist / Gestalt

21. In a Nutshell
• AR/VR is not a kind of device or specific experience.
• It’s an enabling infrastructure for new superpowers.
– Like the “internet of things” but for people and places.
– Like the “interwebs” but tied to the spaces we inhabit.
• It’s about people, places and things, wired together in
a current of ideas.
• It’s about unleashing a kind of magic into the world…

22. Did you say “Magic?”
• It’s the uber superpower
– The power to make thoughts real
• But magic breaks rules, covenants,
and socio-economic conventions
– Like ownership, copyright, wiretapping
laws and sometimes causality itself.
(This is why you can’t wish for more wishes)

23. Consequence
• The more “superpowers” we get…
• The less constrained we are to natural limits…
• Top-down institutions depend on those limits…
Therefore, those old institutions will be gradually
wiped away, replaced by something new.
But what?